Abstract Speech perception plays a key role in many fields of human development and social life but is often impaired by ambiguities on various levels of processing. While these phenomena have been extensively researched in the cognitive (neuro-) sciences according to empirical paradigms that adhere to the third-person perspective of externally measurable behavior, their first-personal and agentive dimensions remain mostly elusive. However, particularly the latter should not be neglected as they can in principle not completely be mapped on quantitative data but are crucial for people in lifeworld situations. We explored this point in the contexts of cognitive penetrability and mental action and conducted a mixed-methods study with qualitative reports on speech perceptual reversal ( N = 63) as part of a series of related studies on other modalities. Exposed to respective stimuli, one half of the participants was instructed to voluntarily change their verbal percept, while the other half were told to hold a deliberately chosen word. Qualitative data analysis revealed four typical forms of mental activity, various strategies, and accompanying forms of intention and metacognitive feelings. On the one hand, this activity structure replicates that found in already published studies on vision and non-linguistic audition and thus lends itself to refinement of Posner and Petersen’s ( Annual Reviews in Neuroscience, 13 , 25–42, 1990) classic model of attentional shift. On the other hand, statistical testing of the quantified data strengthened our hypotheses about mental activities across conditions and modalities, thus also arguing for a cultivable agentive attention awareness in speech perception that even penetrates early stages of speech processing. 

Consciously choosing and shaping what to comprehend: a mixed-methods approach to first-person aspects of mental agency in ambiguous speech perception

Towards a Discourse on Foundation

A core issue of embodiment is the question of how phenomenal and agentive consciousness relates to external forms of behavior. Instead of biasing the question in terms of the “hard problem” as to why and how consciousness arises from brain processes (D. Chalmers), it is suggested to ask for psychophysical correlations in a metaphysically neutral way. This, however, demands (1) to explore both sides of the problem with equivalent precision and depth—not only the physical—and (2) to develop a metaphysically neutral tool to formalize them in a consistent way. Concerning (1), the basic structure of mental micro-activities found in first-person studies on cognitive processes suggests extending the scope of qualia as a mark of consciousness. In the context of Structure Phenomenology (H. Witzenmann), functionally negative phenomenality experienced in ambiguous or meaning-deprived situations and inner agentive qualia of mental activities are correlated with the decompositional signature of sensory-neural processing and synchronized neural oscillations. Concerning (2), G. Günther’s Transclassical Logic is briefly introduced and deployed to integrate the mental, psychophysical, and physical contextures in a three-valued formal framework which also includes enacted and embodied aspects. The emerging picture rebalances first-person and third-person aspects of cognition by functionally separating and dynamically integrating them, thus revitalizing the neurophenomenological research agenda with new experimental proposals and concrete hypotheses. 

Coupling First-Person Cognitive Research With Neurophilosophy and Enactivism: An Outline of Arguments

This open access book is the first English translation of Herbert Witzenmann’s seminal work, Strukturphänomenologie, which departs from the traditional phenomenological methods of Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to introduce a fresh approach to the nexus of consciousness and reality. In Structure Phenomenology, Witzenmann argues for the active mental participation of humans in the emergence of everyday consciousness of all kinds. Whilst many philosophers advocating the notion of pre-reflective consciousness claim that habitual states of phenomenal consciousness must be ascribed a derivative or memorative status, even if they seem to refer to present objectivity, Witzenmann proposes an alternative first-person methodology. Through his logically grounded and experience-based approach, he contends that it is not neural processes that produce consciousness, but rather one’s own preconscious rootedness in reality which can be made conscious. Influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Witzenmann’s innovative approach casts new light on a 

Structure Phenomenology

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Herbert Witzenmann

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Structure Phenomenology